Introduction

I wanted to produce Hellboy simply because I'm a fan of the character, and although my idea is pretty simple, I wanted to convey a strong and powerful expression in it, with strong, striking features.

I am passionate about images that have a distinct lighting effect and that set striking silhouettes of the characters. For me, the key point in an image is to get the scene to convey some sense or feeling in order to characterize the scene. These are often well-detailed pieces that have good texture and lighting.

I made this image in my free time, and in total it took around ten working days to produce. Here's my process...

The basic head mesh

To develop Hellboy, I first made a simple base head in SoftImage just so I could get a notion of the basic volume and proportion. I then took it into ZBrush to project the silhouette of my base on the model of Hellboy.

The head model used as a base

Sculpting a likeness

I then sought references from games, movies, and illustrations of the Hellboy character so I could begin to better define my base and sculpt it as closely to the real model as possible. After that I began to imagine how it would appear my final scene. In my head, I didn't want to develop a full-body image of the character, but just part of it, so I opted to sculpt only the chest and head.

The first stage of sculpting a likeness

Creating the UVs

Then I exported the character's head into Softimage again and with the correct proportions and volumes in place, I started developing Hellboy's clothing. I created the opening UVs piece by piece, and gave each piece of clothing (the buckle, accessories, shirt and coat) a separate UV, so that the texture on each part of the model would be more realistic.